RE: VQ P-61 CONTRUCTION
Wow... while everyone has been contemplating the best way to make black spinners I've been busy after work in the evenings finishing up preparing hookups in the booms and fuelproofing them. I just started covering the first one this evening. I've actually found covering this airplane kind of refreshing- its something that I know how to do without having to think too much! And compared to everything else it actually goes quite fast.
I also worked out the proper invasion stripe shape for the tail sections. You wouldn't think that cutting three vertical bars would be that hard, but when you lay the covering over the conical shape of the booms you discover that straight cuts become very curved ones. An interesting geometry problem that I ended up using Autocad to solve by making correctly curved templates.
I'm going to send the spinners to Tony early next week for him to paint black and clearcoat. Just a hunch that this is the best thing to do. But I am going to wait until I assemble the plane (again) this weekend and use the spinners to line up the final location for the cowls.
PS- a little comic relief...
I also had to do a little repair work on my old LT-40 trainer this week. I took it out to the field last Sunday for "rudder practice"- locked up the ailerons to force myself to fly with rudder control only, which I thought could be good left-hand practice for the upcoming 'Widow maiden. It went great the first flight but during the second flight the rubber bands that I borrowed broke during a high speed pull up and the wing separated from the fuse. I quickly cut the engine back and was actually able to "fly" the resulting lawn dart down with minimal damage- only a broken engine mount and cracked cowl cheeks! I was proud of myself- I've seen newbies do a whole lot more damage trying to land an intact airplane! [:-]
Walt